Roaming the blogosphere

As a prelude to sitting down and properly looking over the many excellent Irish blogs to be found on the long lists for the Irish Blog Awards, I thought I'd share with you some of the more unusual, but interesting non-Irish blogs I've come across recently.

For Girls Who Can't Do Football - A bit of untruth in advertising here. The splendidly monikered Georgina Best strides that fine, previously unknown, line between gurly life rambling blog (second biggest blog category in the whole 'sphere apart from cat blogs) and footie fanatic blog. Quality result! The girl done well.

Chatsoccer - Not strictly a blog, though it has group blog-like qualities. I mentioned them a little while ago, when they were still all new and pink with that lovely baby smell. Now they're already toasting the mainstream media on all things Irish footie-related. Spare yourself the euro and ignore what you read on the red-tops' backpage. Chances are, if it's true they probably nicked it from Chatsoccer.

What Does John Know? - Everything, actually, if what you want to know about is whiskey. John publishes a glossy expensive magazine purely about whiskey - the sort of mag you find in the rack in suites of five star hotels. But go to his blog, and for the price of the internet connection, you get the full inside track on whiskey, whisky, bourbon, rye and that muck that Japanese, New Zealanders and for all I know Martians also claim to be the water of life.

Tattooblog - Does exactly what it says on the skin, sorry, tin. It's not the usual insider 'body adornment' mong banging on about how 'tribal' his studio in some San Diego basement is. Though there is a serious appreciation of skin art expressed herein.
Nope, this blog strikes the tone of a celeb mag, with plenty of pics of new celeb tats and fresh pics of what's hot in tatworld (and not in the half-dressed biker chick kind of way). Wanna see tattoos of Darth Vader crossed with Hello Kitty, or read about braille tattoos for blind people? Or just find out what Amy Winehouse or Jordan's new tattoos are? This is where to go.

Weird Meat - Michael from Weird Meat is the inevitable result of the fetishisation of food and cuisine in modern culture. But writes it all up so well, you have to forgive him his penchant for chowing down on worm fungus, live shrimp and lizard soup in various unsignposted backstreet eateries in Asia.
This is what happens when you cross the food pornography of a Nigella or a Jamie with the backpacker spirit of eating local from a dodgy street stall even when your brain and tummy tell you not to. The lad has balls (sheep's balls, and he ate them in Shanghai).
For proper dodgy meat, however, he really needs to get out of Asia and over to Iceland, where rotten shark, whalemeat and singed sheep heads are traditional fare (I've had one of them and it was fantastic - not saying which one, though!)

There are more, but those are my current faves out there. And yes, I need to get out more, so I'm going to try doing that next week.